


Faith

by roraruu



Category: Fire Emblem Echoes: Mou Hitori no Eiyuu Ou | Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia
Genre: Crisis of Faith, F/M, Identity Issues, Implied Sexual Content, Post-War, Religion, romance or disillusion? idk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-24
Updated: 2020-03-24
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:52:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23301193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roraruu/pseuds/roraruu
Summary: Mila is dead and Lukas feels a crisis.
Relationships: Efi | Faye/Lukas
Kudos: 12





	Faith

**Author's Note:**

  * For [theatrythms](https://archiveofourown.org/users/theatrythms/gifts).



> this is hella weird but whatever its 2020 i do what i want. i just think they have a lot of potential as friends and comrades ok. also please no one ask me about religion, i am a gay angostic jew i know jack about this shite??  
> this is based on some conversations emily n i had. please read her shit she's amazing...  
> as always, thanks for reading n everything y'all do ♥️♥️♥️

Mila is dead and Lukas feels a crisis. 

From the day he was born, he had been told to be pious, religion being struck right into his core. Prayer at dawn. Keeping the Mother in his every thought. A quick word from his lips before every battle: “ _Mother keep me in the palm of your hand_ ”.

He is unsure whether it is fear or love or simply duty. Nobles have more reasons to be idle, and with idleness comes reasons to socialize be it in shrines, churches or the Mother's own Temple. Though Lukas feels a distance with the social ideas that come with piety. He avoided afternoon teas after worship, the meals and idle discussions of holy texts and scriptures that followed. His piety was always kept secret and sacred, clutched tightly against his cold little heart as he prayed at dawn and dusk.

He wakes earlier to speak prayers to Mother, to start the day right as his governess had said. Before meals, he speaks a prayer in his mind, to bless the meal and the ones that follow. Before bed, he prays again, to keep him safe in his dreams and in the dawn of the new day. He confesses to Silque often. And before battles he speaks prayers for the Deliverance, for his soul, for Zofia, for everyone in the quiet of his mind.

He kept his piety a secret. Not out of fear, just privacy. Forsyth and Clive would only jeer that it was the right thing to do, like Python would have scoffed at him for holding faith in a god. But can it be faith? Is it faith for his hands to shake while he pleads to survive the next battle? Is it faith to come close to tears behind a makeshift confessional booth of a canvas wall tent? Is it faith to wake in the night, fearing a Goddess’s wrath?

He questions faith now, more than ever. Mila is dead, nothing more than a pile of bones and sprouts. In his weakness and crisis, he writes to Silque, to Tatiana, to the cleric on Celica’s pilgrimage, Genny. _What is faith?_ He writes after pleasant, _how do you do_ s, _I hope your travels have been safe_ , and _I fear we have never met, but I beg a boon of you._

Silque says faith is an unwavering devotion in a God’s stead, in their eminence and sureness of their intentions that are left behind.

Tatiana says it is a love in what we cannot see. Perhaps it is before our eyes, perhaps it is not. It is a faith in the unknown. 

But Genny’s response, a young lady barely 18, responds with something that chills him. Her script is small but precise. Not a word to be spared or given.

 _It is was we are born into, I suppose._ She writes eloquently. _I was born into a priory. Faith is me and everything I am. Faith in myself._

And it keeps Lukas up at night. 

Lukas’s crisis spreads beyond his stone mask. It is no longer something that he can hide under a placid smile or a raised brow. It becomes him, as Genny said. Knighthood keeps him busy, distracted. But most of the work is solitary, leaving him alone for hours. Jobs like being posted to protecting a town from bandits, wandering the desert on patrol, sitting by a snowy lake in what used to be Rigel become the norm. His mind wanders to Mila, what of his faith. He has no one to turn to, and doubt comes in.

Perhaps this has all been a farce, since the day he was born. Born into a backwater title and pushed to be faithful, while his brother, the heir, had to worry about learning how to speak to the royal court and before the King, how to behave at balls and cotillions, how fill out tax forms and rule with an iron fist.

Perhaps his poor mother, Claudia, in all her weak kindness, had been told by the governess that there were two paths for Lukas as the second son. A life of quiet as a priest, a holy life, rich in faith and purpose. Or a life as a knight, a soldier to the armyl tough, but fulfilling. And Claudia, a torn woman—noble by married name, common by the cracks in her hands—and tore her son in two. Perhaps she had told his governess, on her death bed, to prepare him for the worst—the life of a knight—and to hope for the best, a life of a priest. 

Lukas can’t find it in himself to speak ill of the dead. A commandment of the Mother: speak not of the fallen, only the good and kind for their departed souls. So instead, he sadly thanks his mother, for leading him down to his life of faith and blood and farce.

Yet, faith returns to Lukas in another form. Not of an ages-old, exiled Goddess, but in the dirty hands of a country girl. A celebration for the end of the war, the armistice and the unification, a decade of peace.

But can anyone call it that aptly? They live on rations, the lands are still fallow and trampled by war from ages ago. The faithful and witches still wander the land, purposeless and aching. Lukas remembers driving his lance through the neck of a witch with Silque one day. Her eyes were as empty as his, croaking out in a voice that was too human for a husk to let her go.

The stench of her blood carried on his lance for the rest of the march. He could hear Silque crying while she walked ahead.

But Lukas supposes that this is a sort of peace, fragmented and scratched to all hell. He places his... hopes in the King and Queen and their children, in the court that is reformed and home to common and noble alike, in the Brotherhood of Knights that he works for.

Mathilda is the one to tell him of the ball. The captain is still working hard, drilling the new recruits relentlessly, though expecting her third child. “You will come won’t you?” She asks him expectantly. She is still a stickler for noble practices, a decade after the King and Queen had attempted to reform court to little avail.

“I’ve an invitation yes.” He admits. He hadn't given much thought to it, other than appearing and acting as a wallflower for the night, perhaps going so far as to make sure Python gets a bucket and a pass to his room after a few glasses of wine.

“Use it then. Let it not go to waste.”

“You think I would, Captain?” He asks.

“I never know with you Lukas.” She confesses, a hint of disappointment in her voice before turning away.

Nights pass with empty prayers and days meld together until the day of the ball arrives. And in hurried apathy, Lukas arrives, dressed with a crimson sash that is decorated in medallions and medals from service. They’re clothed upon the survivors of the war, soldiers of the Deliverance and priests of the Pilgrimage. It doesn’t feel right across his chest. Should he have pride for the blood that stains his hands and soul; that it was the price of another’s blood and bone that kept him alive? Is it not enough a medal that he walks on his own two legs and keeps his mind sane?

Lukas doesn’t know. He forces a smile when someone he knows passes. He doesn’t dance, not at all. A waltz approaches. He stands against the wall, the gold moldings of Mila Idols and the Crests of Zofia upon the arches have not been replaced since Castle Valentia was Zofia Castle. 

And the village girl, the heart of faith, moves to his shoulder. She beams softly, sweetly. “Sir Lukas, a sight for sore eyes.” Her warm hand meets his shoulder. Her hair is braided into a crown, with a large pink rose on either side of her face. Her dress is simple, white with pink trim and gold thread, complimenting the red sash of survival across her chest.

He gives her a thin smile. “Faye. I did not know that you were coming.” 

She nods. “Al—Our king sent the letter specifically.“ she catches herself from saying the King’s first name. All is distanced now, no more comrades and brothers in arms but fellow courtiers and nobility. Even she has a title, Lady Faye of Ram Village, sainted as the Devoted Heart. “He sent a horse too to make sure I came.”

“How kind.”

She nods, staring into her wine. “Do you dance, Sir Lukas?” She asks.

He shakes his head. “Haven’t for years. No cause to.”

“Well you have one now.” She says before smiling. “Or tell me, you don’t like to.”

He stares at her for a moment. “No I enjoy to dance.” He confesses. 

“Then the next song shall be mine.” She says, setting her wine glass down and taking her skirt in her hand.

And when he dances with her, he feels a little faith return to him, even though the Mother is dead and the Gods no longer exist on this mortal plane. She steps on his toes and waltzes like a wyvern, but all the while, Lukas sees a holy glow about her face, in her eyes, in her smile. He dances more in that night with Faye than he has ever in his life, and at the end of the night, he takes her hand and raises it to his lips, begging for tea tomorrow with her.

Faye’s face lights up in a wonderful smile. She nods a little. “Yes, of course.”

He waits impatiently for the pleasure of teatime with her, something he'd resented for many years. But now, it becomes something so precious, to sit with a woman who reminds him of his faith, of a time when all was clear and confused. He grows so eager that he dismisses his men early to seek out a baker in the city below. He pays in a week's wages for a rush job on half a dozen berry cheesecakes, his favourite, and he hopes that will please her. He also buys a hundred grams of expensive rose-petal tea; an export from his family's territory, and something that would stimulate conversation, worship. He sits in the drawing room, waiting until the afternoon when she comes in. He feels his heart tighten then ease, as it did when he would pray to Mila.

Tea leaves him in rapture. Her every movement, from the flutter of her lashes to the swirling finger that traces the lip of her teacup, leaves him wondering if this is faith. He practically leans over the table, listening to her every word of the past ten years. He earns many glares from passing noblewomen and men for his conduct, but he cares not; faith is before him in the form of a village girl, slipping her tea that she says is amazing and murmuring about how the mini cheesecakes look too pretty to eat. He asks about her village and she tells all as if she is an all-knowing goddess. She speaks about returning home and the celebration that occurred (apparently her Nana only stopped crying when they gave her a drink), about the vineyard that her family owns that is finally beginning to foster proper grapes for Ram Wine, about training eager village children as Mycen had, the off occasions she is called to fill in for a sick school teacher in town. Of her family and how her village friends write or visit from time to time, but—

“It’s not the same. It won’t ever be.” She confesses into the empty pot. “And it’s because of you.”

His heart skips a beat. “Me?”

“You took us all from Ram and made us into warriors. No one else would have ever take a chance on us.” Faye says. “A buncha village kids with wooden swords and scraped up knees.”

“Perhaps that was the best decision of my life.” He muses to himself.

Faye’s lips curl into a smile. He thinks that he sees the Mother before clearing his throat. “How long are you staying here for?”

“One more day.” Her smile falls, saddened by reality.

“Then may we have tea again tomorrow?”

She nods, her plaits slipping over her shoulder as she sips the last of her tea and insists for him to take the last cheesecake. He considers it a gift from his goddess.

* * *

Rapture comes again, but this time it is after tea. When he is searching for a reason to see her, to go to her chamber in the castle—he resides in the barracks as a measure to ply the nobility and the common—and see her.

He is passing by the greenhouse when it comes. A dozen roses, most likely an export from his family's House. He steals them, a backhanded spit in the face to his brother, and as a gift to his goddess. A means to pay tribute, a reason to see her and pray as he did to Mila. It feels so long since he'd prayed. Though, the prayer he gives to her is much different than any traditional means.

He tries to think of what he will say to her when she opens the door, but no words come. Funny, he is a lover of literature, fascinated by the weight of words, and now he has nothing but the roses in hand and the nervousness that makes his body tremble. No words are needed after the soft three taps at her door; she falls into his clasped, holy hands and takes over all his thoughts, dying a little death with him. 

As they lie in her bed, tired and aching for each other’s body, Lukas sees a heavenly glow wrap around Faye. Her eyes are shut, perhaps she is dozing off, or maybe faking so that he will leave. But regardless, in her freckled skin, in her straw hair that falls around them, in her long lashes and the soft curves of her body, Lukas finds faith.

“You are my goddess.” He confesses softly, under his breath. He cares not that she may be awake. He must say it.

Her lashes flutter, half open. Her lips curve slightly, her eyes dark and full of both knowledge and mystery. She reaches for his hand, shifting closer in the sheets.

In a heavenly glow wrapped around her, he sees faith once more. Faith, in the eyes of this village girl. _No_ , village woman. She’s grown since he came to her village and took her faith from her. Faith in that she would only ever be a farm hand and someone’s daughter. Yet, she regained it in some unknown way, and he longs to learn of it. He sees everything that he was raised with in the dark of her eyes and the softness of her face. Prayers at dawn and night, before meals and battles. Love and deliverance and hope and justice and righteousness. For the first time in years, he feels full, faithful, just.

“Your body is my church, your eyes are my prayer books, your hands are my relic.” His hands trace the soft curves of her body. “In your arms I take worship.”

Faye only smirks. “You lay it on thick huh?”

“Loving you is the closest I will come to loving a goddess.” Lukas confesses.

Her eyes widen. “You love me?”

“If that is what this is, yes.” He says, pressing a kiss to her forehead. “I love you, most sincerely, most kindly, with all my being.”

She whispers a plea to him: _will you come back to Ram Village with me?_

And to her, he whispers an answer: _I will come with my faith._


End file.
